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The Salt-Box House: Eighteenth Century Life in a New England Hill Town
Excerpt from The Salt-Box House: Eighteenth Century Life in a New England Hill Town
Fire, with its relentless touch; the paper-mill during the Civil War with its eager grasp and large recompense; and the hand that knows no reverence for Yesterday have combined to cast into the pit of Oblivion much that would now be deemed priceless. But the faithful seeker along the shores of the Past will find that there yet remain sheltered beaches where some of the treasures left by the flood of Time have escaped the wear of waves, a careless foot, and crumpling fingers.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Fire, with its relentless touch; the paper-mill during the Civil War with its eager grasp and large recompense; and the hand that knows no reverence for Yesterday have combined to cast into the pit of Oblivion much that would now be deemed priceless. But the faithful seeker along the shores of the Past will find that there yet remain sheltered beaches where some of the treasures left by the flood of Time have escaped the wear of waves, a careless foot, and crumpling fingers.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
- GenresHistory
305 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2007
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January 26, 2020
Revive Books publishes “great American books from the past” and The Salt-Box House: Eighteenth Century Life in a New England Hill Town, by Jane de Forest Shelton, is one of them. Shelton is an unsung pioneer in the tradition of microhistory, which focuses on a limited place, object, or time. In this case, she is writing about the house in Connecticut where her ancestors lived.
Shelton’s family, and other families at that time, lived isolated and independent. She treasures the character of these families, relating it to the unfolding of uniquely American history. “[F]ear was not cultivated. To be brave, to be skillful in whatever one set a hand to, to accomplish everything undertaken, to surmount difficulty, gave life a perpetual goal. Nothing was more clearly demonstrated in the later conflict [the American Revolution] with disciplined armies than that he that had been faithful in little would be faithful also in much. That the hour of emergency must be the hour of triumph is one of the great underlying principles for the success of a venture or a country.”
She describes in detail the life lived in the salt-box houses of New England and the temperament that grew out of such homes. “Simple and direct as the life was, it was also interdependent. …each life was a thread in a cable, and when the call to arms came, it was that …sense of individual responsibility, through standing shoulder to shoulder, each one acting as if he were the whole, that gave the untrained militia a power far beyond that of men who fear to step until they have fitted their feet to their neighbors’ footsteps.”
An example of a highly trained militia was the arrival in the neighborhood of troops led by the French Count Rochambeau, on their way to reinforce the troops of General Washington. The townspeople were spellbound by the “array of six hundred men with all the splendor of gold lace and nodding plumes, the horses bravely caparisoned.” It was “a rare sight to those whose knowledge of military display had been limited to the ‘training’ of one small company of men not even in uniform.” The Shelton boys, under the influence of their Tory family, “hardly knew which side would claim their allegiance under the beauty of French uniforms and the glitter of their accoutrements. It seemed far more like leading to a successful issue than a company of men in every-day dress supplemented by muskets and canteens.”
The French soldiers had never seen tobacco, and “finally, with true French instinct, concluded it must be something to put in soup.”
In 1900, when Shelton was writing the book, Connecticut was still full of farming communities living in salt-box houses heated by fireplaces, driving shays and carriages, communicating only by post or personal visit. She writes with an easy familiarity about many of the customs and objects in the book because between 1750 and 1900, daily life did not change much, and families remained rooted in place.
Especially in the early days, each house was self-sustaining. Surpluses were exported through the local ship’s captain, whose ships sailed to the West Indies. Luxury items such as molasses, sugar, fine cloth, coffee and tea, and, later, chinaware, were brought back when he returned. For the clothes they wore every day, women spun flax into linen, and carded the wool from their own sheep. They smoked their own meats, churned their own butter, and grew their own vegetables.
Church was where family and neighbors met. Hymns were tuned with a pitch pipe, then the tuning-fork was invented, giving place in the early 19th century to the bassoon and bass-viol, “until organs supplanted both.” The preacher, who was the community’s intellectual leader, stitched together his notes for the sermon with thread of linen or blue yarn.
At first, children were educated by their mothers, using the Bible and a library of only a few books. Later, when town schools were established, the law required that slaves be taught to read and write (in the South, the law said that no slave should learn to read and write). Until the “invention” of the American dictionary by Samuel Webster, first published in 1828, spelling was phonetic, a matter of personal taste. Sometimes “kitchen” was spelled “Cichon.” Makes sense.
For entertainment, they told stories and recited doggerel and verses which were passed from person to person. Mothers created balls out of unraveled stockings, tightly wound, and covered with soft leather. They were used to play a form of baseball called “four-holey-crack” or “round-ball.” The girls had homemade rag dolls. They played tag, hide-and-seek, blindman’s-buff, and fox and geese. They fished in areas of the nearby river formally allocated to each family, except for Saturday, when fishing was free to everyone. Idle hands led to mischief, and in the evenings they rushed chairs and made baskets, mops, doormats, and straw hats using cattails, local reeds, or corn-husks.
The ladies had occasional “tea drinkings,” at which it was customary for each guest to bring her own cup and teaspoon. In the early years, these teacups had no handles. “A spoon left in the cup and against its edge, made a rest for the forefinger placed in front of it; while the other fingers, back of it, held the cup itself.” (Later generations enjoyed teacups with handles.) They ate off of pewter plates which shined “like silver.” (I have never seen pewter shining like silver, maybe because we no longer know how to shine it.)
Houses stood far from neighbors, and perforce, solitude and hospitality were prized. Every passerby was granted shelter and food. It could not have been otherwise in a time of such great distances. There was a tavern in most towns which served multiple purposes, including post office, but out in the country, travelers had to depend on the hospitality of strangers.
Slavery is never comfortable or preferable, but slavery was different in Connecticut than in the South. In the Shelton family compound, the slaves had their own house just a few footsteps away from the main house; they worked, ate, went to school, and attended church together. There was, in other words, slavery, but not segregation. After the American Revolution, Connecticut’s legislature declared all slaves born after 1784 free at 25 years of age, and gradually slavery disappeared altogether.
In 1777, six hundred persons were ill with smallpox at one time in their town. Pest-houses were built and victims had to stay there until they were healed. By 1799, the population began to be inoculated with virus taken from a human being. Cows were not used as virus donors until much later.
The mileposts of life were observed with rituals. Babies were christened immediately for fear they might die unblessed. Women embroidered, spun, and wove sheets, quilts, clothes, tablecloths, and other such for their dowry. (In my own mother’s time it was called a Hope Chest.) When a person died, everything in the house was covered in white linen, including pictures, and mirrors. The coffin lay on a narrow table and was born to the cemetery by pallbearers, even if a horse was available. If the cemetery was far away, there were relays of pallbearers.
Today, we think of ourselves as modern; yet there is much to learn from the people who lived in salt-box houses. They thought they were "modern" too.
Shelton’s family, and other families at that time, lived isolated and independent. She treasures the character of these families, relating it to the unfolding of uniquely American history. “[F]ear was not cultivated. To be brave, to be skillful in whatever one set a hand to, to accomplish everything undertaken, to surmount difficulty, gave life a perpetual goal. Nothing was more clearly demonstrated in the later conflict [the American Revolution] with disciplined armies than that he that had been faithful in little would be faithful also in much. That the hour of emergency must be the hour of triumph is one of the great underlying principles for the success of a venture or a country.”
She describes in detail the life lived in the salt-box houses of New England and the temperament that grew out of such homes. “Simple and direct as the life was, it was also interdependent. …each life was a thread in a cable, and when the call to arms came, it was that …sense of individual responsibility, through standing shoulder to shoulder, each one acting as if he were the whole, that gave the untrained militia a power far beyond that of men who fear to step until they have fitted their feet to their neighbors’ footsteps.”
An example of a highly trained militia was the arrival in the neighborhood of troops led by the French Count Rochambeau, on their way to reinforce the troops of General Washington. The townspeople were spellbound by the “array of six hundred men with all the splendor of gold lace and nodding plumes, the horses bravely caparisoned.” It was “a rare sight to those whose knowledge of military display had been limited to the ‘training’ of one small company of men not even in uniform.” The Shelton boys, under the influence of their Tory family, “hardly knew which side would claim their allegiance under the beauty of French uniforms and the glitter of their accoutrements. It seemed far more like leading to a successful issue than a company of men in every-day dress supplemented by muskets and canteens.”
The French soldiers had never seen tobacco, and “finally, with true French instinct, concluded it must be something to put in soup.”
In 1900, when Shelton was writing the book, Connecticut was still full of farming communities living in salt-box houses heated by fireplaces, driving shays and carriages, communicating only by post or personal visit. She writes with an easy familiarity about many of the customs and objects in the book because between 1750 and 1900, daily life did not change much, and families remained rooted in place.
Especially in the early days, each house was self-sustaining. Surpluses were exported through the local ship’s captain, whose ships sailed to the West Indies. Luxury items such as molasses, sugar, fine cloth, coffee and tea, and, later, chinaware, were brought back when he returned. For the clothes they wore every day, women spun flax into linen, and carded the wool from their own sheep. They smoked their own meats, churned their own butter, and grew their own vegetables.
Church was where family and neighbors met. Hymns were tuned with a pitch pipe, then the tuning-fork was invented, giving place in the early 19th century to the bassoon and bass-viol, “until organs supplanted both.” The preacher, who was the community’s intellectual leader, stitched together his notes for the sermon with thread of linen or blue yarn.
At first, children were educated by their mothers, using the Bible and a library of only a few books. Later, when town schools were established, the law required that slaves be taught to read and write (in the South, the law said that no slave should learn to read and write). Until the “invention” of the American dictionary by Samuel Webster, first published in 1828, spelling was phonetic, a matter of personal taste. Sometimes “kitchen” was spelled “Cichon.” Makes sense.
For entertainment, they told stories and recited doggerel and verses which were passed from person to person. Mothers created balls out of unraveled stockings, tightly wound, and covered with soft leather. They were used to play a form of baseball called “four-holey-crack” or “round-ball.” The girls had homemade rag dolls. They played tag, hide-and-seek, blindman’s-buff, and fox and geese. They fished in areas of the nearby river formally allocated to each family, except for Saturday, when fishing was free to everyone. Idle hands led to mischief, and in the evenings they rushed chairs and made baskets, mops, doormats, and straw hats using cattails, local reeds, or corn-husks.
The ladies had occasional “tea drinkings,” at which it was customary for each guest to bring her own cup and teaspoon. In the early years, these teacups had no handles. “A spoon left in the cup and against its edge, made a rest for the forefinger placed in front of it; while the other fingers, back of it, held the cup itself.” (Later generations enjoyed teacups with handles.) They ate off of pewter plates which shined “like silver.” (I have never seen pewter shining like silver, maybe because we no longer know how to shine it.)
Houses stood far from neighbors, and perforce, solitude and hospitality were prized. Every passerby was granted shelter and food. It could not have been otherwise in a time of such great distances. There was a tavern in most towns which served multiple purposes, including post office, but out in the country, travelers had to depend on the hospitality of strangers.
Slavery is never comfortable or preferable, but slavery was different in Connecticut than in the South. In the Shelton family compound, the slaves had their own house just a few footsteps away from the main house; they worked, ate, went to school, and attended church together. There was, in other words, slavery, but not segregation. After the American Revolution, Connecticut’s legislature declared all slaves born after 1784 free at 25 years of age, and gradually slavery disappeared altogether.
In 1777, six hundred persons were ill with smallpox at one time in their town. Pest-houses were built and victims had to stay there until they were healed. By 1799, the population began to be inoculated with virus taken from a human being. Cows were not used as virus donors until much later.
The mileposts of life were observed with rituals. Babies were christened immediately for fear they might die unblessed. Women embroidered, spun, and wove sheets, quilts, clothes, tablecloths, and other such for their dowry. (In my own mother’s time it was called a Hope Chest.) When a person died, everything in the house was covered in white linen, including pictures, and mirrors. The coffin lay on a narrow table and was born to the cemetery by pallbearers, even if a horse was available. If the cemetery was far away, there were relays of pallbearers.
Today, we think of ourselves as modern; yet there is much to learn from the people who lived in salt-box houses. They thought they were "modern" too.
Want to Read
December 6, 2011Recommended in the book, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair.
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